China tells US tech companies to sign PRISM-like cyber-loyalty pact

As China’s President Xi Jingping prepares to visit the White House, the head of China's Cyberspace Administration, Lu Wei, is holding a summit with US technology companies in Seattle (WA). There, he's expected to further press US technology companies operating in China to sign off on a pledge that they will comply with Chinese information security policies -- potentially giving Chinese authorities direct access to user data.

The terms of the pledge, which the New York Times reports requires companies to “promise they would not harm China’s national security and would store Chinese user data within the country,” are similar in ways to the PRISM agreement between technology companies and the US government revealed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. But the pledge also goes further, pressing for systems to be “secure and controllable” -- suggesting that companies may have to provide direct backdoors to systems for surveillance and provide the Chinese government with source code to their applications.The pledge document begins, “Our company agrees to strictly adhere to two key principles of ‘not harming national security and not harming consumer rights.’”